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busily colonizing their home solar systems when Charlemagne was still planning his conquests of Central Europe.
    Even political differences didn’t seem to matter. The Juriani and Cimmaheem were currently embroiled in a major controversy regarding the development of a half dozen worlds bordering their empires, yet I saw a mixed group of them sitting around a table playing a card game and chatting quite amicably.
    The bar end of the first-class dining car was much the same, with the social lubricant of alcohol and other intoxicants adding an extra layer of goodwill and camaraderie. Only in the restaurant section did the travelers largely segregate themselves, and I suspected that had more to do with the challenges of species-specific food aromas than any xenophobia.
    The car in front of the dining car contained more first-class seating, with more of the social mixing I’d already seen. Finally, in the compartment car ahead of that one, we reached our new home.
    It was as nice as I’d expected, and then some. It was small, of course, but the space had been utilized so efficiently that it didn’t feel at all cramped. Attached to the front wall was a narrow but comfortable-looking bed that could be folded up for extra floor space. Above the bed was a luggage rack with my two carrybags sitting neatly side by side. Against the outer wall was a lounge chair with a swivel computer beside it on one side and an expansive display window—currently blank—on the other. On the opposite side of the display window was a fold-down clothes rack, with memory-plastic hook/hangers that could stretch or shrink as needed, plus a built-in sonic cleaning system with a quick-turn cycle for half-hour freshening. A tiny human-configured half bath was tucked into the corner beside the door, the whole cubicle converting into a shower stall for use after long overnight trips. Finally, the back wall contained a curve couch with a set of reading and ambiance lights
strategically placed above it. The room was done up in a tasteful color scheme, with decorative moldings and small cameo-style carvings where the walls and ceiling met “I could get used to this,” I commented as I circled the room, touching the various controls and running my fingers over the moldings and the sections of polished wood and metal. The lounge chair had a leathery feel to it, while the curve couch was done up in something midway between velvet and very soft feathers.
    “I trust you’ll find it adequate,” Bayta said. She stepped past me as I finished my tour and touched a control beneath the display window. In response, the curve couch and lights collapsed neatly into the back wall, which then retracted into the side of the half-bath cubicle to reveal a mirror image of the compartment we were standing in. “This one’s mine,” she said, a subtle note of warning in her tone.
    “Of course,” I said. Not that I was likely to have made a swing for her even if I hadn’t had more important business on my mind. Walking back to my bed, I reached up to the luggage rack and hauled down the smaller of my two carrybags.
    And as I did so, a quiet alarm went off in the back of my skull. Earlier, when I’d carried the bags out of the transfer station restaurant, the leatherlite grip that rode the handle straps had been flexible, even a little squishy. Now there was virtually no give to the grip at all. “Bayta, can you pull up a dining car menu for me?” I asked casually as I popped the bag open.
    “Certainly,” she said, sitting down in the lounge chair and swiveling the computer around to face her.
    And with her attention now safely occupied, I gave the handle a close look.
    The reason for the change in its feel was instantly obvious. The space between the grip and the strap, the looseness of which had given the handle its squishiness, had been completely filled in, like an éclair with a double helping of cream. The material matched the leatherlite’s color and texture